The Book of the Stars

The following morning, Oleandra and the other Hogwarts students among their group that weren't on the run from the law bade their final farewells to those who would be staying behind, before following Lupin out onto the pavement in front of number 12 Grimmauld Place. Once Lupin had made sure that they were all ready, he raised his wand, hailing down the Knight Bus, and the triple-decker purple bus screeched to a halt next to them, having seemingly appeared from out of nowhere.

The teenagers all got on one at a time and paid the fare for the ride to Hogwarts, but as soon as they set foot in the metallic death trap, they realized that they wouldn't all be able to sit together; it was still early in the morning, so the Knight Bus was fairly full. When it was Oleandra's turn to get on, she paid the fare to take the bus to Diagon Alley, since she had business there before returning to school.

On the way to Diagon Alley, Oleandra retrieved the Weasley twins' Christmas present and held it out in front of her. She couldn't stop admiring it from all of its angles; turning it over and over in her hands to marvel at the royal azure cover embossed with golden stars; brushing her hand against the book's spine; flipping through the ivory pages...

She had paid the Weasley twins a considerable sum of money to make a grimoire for her; 200 Galleons, to be exact. Considering that Astoria had used up a good part of her original 500 Galleon winnings from the Triwizard Tournament, and that Oleandra had gone on an extravagant shopping spree, purchasing an enormous talisman-grade scroll of parchment paper, not much was left of her original personal fortune.

However, it had all been for a good cause. Oleandra hadn't spent her two weeks at the Weasley household idly; she had finally finished drawing up the insigil for the Full Armour of Awe; which was Oleandra's upgraded version of the Full Armour of Elhaz, with the six Elhaz runes replaced with six Ægishjálmur Lokk.

But Oleandra hadn't stopped there; she had also transcribed all of the runic spells she knew, both those that she had learned from the inheritance of the stars and those that she and her friends had come up with. With her preparations ready, Oleandra had then approached the Weasley twins and asked them to create a magical grimoire from the scroll of talisman-grade parchment upon which she had inscribed all of her spells.

And after much negotiation, since Oleandra had politely refused their offer to work for them (she was simply too busy), she had agreed to shell out the sum of 200 Galleons for the Weasley twins' work; which was a colossal sum of money. Even so, it was worth every penny; the creation of magical items was the Weasley twins' speciality, and having worked with them previously, Oleandra had absolute trust in their capabilities.

Really, the only problem with their works was that they ran out of power fairly quickly, but that wasn't a problem for Oleandra. A simple magic-accumulating array on the cover, and the grimoire's powers would be self-sustaining.

And speaking of the Weasleys…

Oleandra had ended up seated with the Weasley twins on the Knight Bus, sandwiched between the two of them on a rickety-looking lawn chair. Being especially proud of their masterpiece, they hadn't missed this opportunity to boast about the intricacies of the weapon that they had designed for her…

"…basically, we stuffed every useful enchantment we could think of in there," Fred was telling her, but his explanations were falling on deaf ears, since Oleandra was too busy admiring her new grimoire. "We had to ask Dumbledore for advice for a few of them, but as you can see, there's a tortoise doing cartwheels down the road, and… would you look at that! Is that Minister for Magic Fudge we just ran over!?"

"Uh-huh," said Oleandra dreamily.

"I don't think she's listening, Fred," said George.

Oleandra snapped to attention.

"As Fred was saying," George continued patiently, "since we recycled the invisibility enchantment from our Headless Hats series of products, you might find that your book shares the same, er… problem."

Oleandra raised an eyebrow.

"It's not a problem, George," Fred exclaimed. "It's a feature!"

Originally, the twins' original purpose with experimenting with Invisibility Spells had been to create a special prank item: Disappearing Gifts. For example, you give a Disappearing Hat (trademark pending) to a friend as a prank, then watch on in hilarity as your friend wonders how they've managed to lose their gift only mere seconds after having received it.

However, due to their inexperience, the Weasley twins hadn't been capable of fine-tuning the invisibility field generated by the hats. Which is to say, instead of only turning invisible, the hats also made everything within a certain radius around them turn invisible… which had the side effect of making one's head invisible when they were worn, which was arguably more hilarious than their initial idea.

And that is how the Disappearing Hat had turned into the Headless Hat!

"Which is why the grimoire can also fly, so that you don't have to hold it; otherwise, your hands would turn invisible," George continued. "When you activate combat mode, the grimoire will automatically lock on to you and float two feet in front of you, at about chest height, and stay there, no matter how much you move."

"That enchantment was the hardest to get right, said Fred with a small chuckle. "Well, second hardest, actually."

"That enchantment you specifically asked for?" said George, "You know, the one that uses your wand as an automatic page-finder bookmark? We had to ask Dumbledore for help with that one, but we did manage to succeed in the end."

"The defensive enchantments were a piece o' cake, though." Fred commented. "Just make sure to avoid spilling any orange juice on your grimoire."

"And finally, since the invisibility enchantment isn't exactly stealthy and the cover is rather flashy, and considering we're heading back to school, where that hag Umbridge is, we've added a little feature, free of charge," George concluded. "You can activate the camouflage function if you ever get searched, and the grimoire will take the appearance of one random book within a two-foot radius."

Oleandra had to admit that it was smart of the Weasley twins to add this feature; but it wouldn't have been necessary if they had got the invisibility enchantment right in the first place…

"Diagon Alley!" Stan Shunpike, the Knight Bus's conductor, cried out.

All in all, the trip within London had taken less than a minute. Oleandra bid the Weasley twins goodbye, before stepping out of the bus onto Diagon Alley's familiar main street.

First, Oleandra stopped at Madam Malkin's, to get her combat robes let out and lengthened some more, since she had outgrown the old design by a wide margin. The magical seamstress took her new measurements, before bustling off to the backrooms to work on the Basilisk skin robes.

Rather than waiting in the shop for Madam Malkin to finish, Oleandra then walked across the street to the post office, where she rented a rather large owl to carry her coded response to the Order of the Round Table's letter.

In essence, the Order had wanted an update on the goings-on inside Hogwarts; how Oleandra's recruitment efforts were going (not very well), her opinion on the power struggle between the Ministry and Dumbledore, and her opinion on the Dark Lady's true identity. Furthermore, the Order's letter had also mentioned a special mission for her, but since Oleandra had not started it yet, having no idea how to go about it, she had not included an update in her response letter...